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Contemporary hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists, pastoralists, agriculturalists and, on a much smaller scale, feudalists are threatened continuously by dominant (post-)industrial, often capitalist, economies. The latter perpetually seek to dominate the former through colonialism and development, violent resource extraction, and the more insidious effects of environmental change. Multidisciplinary research on digital economic transformations postulates that the global spread of digital technologies—designed largely by and for industrial capitalists’ needs and values—accelerates these domination processes. This research on data colonialism or digital capitalism has generated extensive, valuable insights into how technological designs constrain users’ choices. However, there is one major blind spot: Empirically, this research has engaged, primarily, with ‘inter-capitalist struggles’ focusing on contexts dominated by industrial-capitalist and, occasionally, industrial-command and mixed-market economic systems and values. Contemporary other economies and inter-economic struggles are largely missing, even though, especially ethnographic, research has demonstrated the resilience of other economic systems and values in response to various industrial and industrial-capitalist colonization and domination attempts.

The independent and synergic impacts of climatic change and capitalist expansion may render pastoral social-ecological systems extinct. Climatic change compromises rangelands, while economic development fosters conversion of pastoral land into territories for capitalist expansion. Pastoralists’ institutions regulate decision-making to socio-environmental change and shape adaptive responses, enabling mobile livestock rearing for using multiple grazing areas, and households’ diverse income sources. These institutions are characterized by flexibility, such as mixed individual-collective water and land tenure regimes. However, capitalist-led reduction of land-based resources, the push for privatization and commodification of land and livestock hinder flexibility, and undermine pastoralists’ institutions for decision-making; ultimately creating challenges for pastoralists’ adaptive capacity. Research on the compound effects of the expanding global economy and climate change on pastoral social-ecological systems is needed to inform efforts constraining unregulated capitalist expansion, and policies for water and land security. Research, practice, and policies will improve pastoral social-ecological systems adaptability and resilience.

Rural studies has made considerable theoretical and empirical progress on gender and agriculture, yet almost none of this work focuses specifically on women involved in livestock production in the Global North. To address this gap, we explored the experiences of women involved in extensive livestock farming in Spain, including their motivations, identities, challenges, and sources of learning and support. Using a life-history approach, we interviewed 29 women across four regions of Spain and conducted follow-up participatory workshops in three regions. We investigated how women enter the extensive livestock sector, learn the occupation and business of livestock husbandry, and their experiences of power relations and discrimination, then interpreted our findings through the lens of Feminist Agrifood Systems Theory (FAST). Women's narratives reveal three primary pathways into livestock management: via family, via a partner/spouse, and from zero. Although interviewees shared common experiences and struggles, each pathway is associated with distinct motivations, challenges, and sources of learning. This variety of goals and experiences disrupts stereotypes about women's roles in extensive pastoralism and points to the need for outreach and policy grounded in the diverse realities of women's lived experiences. Our results underscore the obstacles pastoralist women face in gaining and maintaining economic and decision-making autonomy. Our findings partially support all FAST propositions, yet highlight continuing challenges for Spanish women entering a historically male-dominated sector. In the Spanish context, we found strongest support for FAST propositions 5 and 6, which posit that women must carefully navigate agricultural institutions, often encountering exclusion and discrimination, and that women create their own networks to address their specific needs and advance agroecology and rural sustainability. Increased training for officials overseeing new enterprise incorporations, and investment in women's networks could reduce institutional bias and increase support for women operators.

The Chinese government has downgraded use of the Mongol language in schools in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and is now using its brand of state environmentalism to rein in Mongol pastoralists, blaming them for the degradation of grasslands. By targeting language and land use, the two pillars of Mongol autonomy, the state has shown that it is prepared to override the very limited forms of autonomy still enjoyed by China’s minority nationalities. Mongol leaders are responding by working within the state and its discourses to preserve pastoralism, casting herders not as keepers of a timeless nomadic culture but as partners in preserving biodiversity and stemming desertification.

Famers’- Herders’ conflict has become a widespread occurrence spreading to all parts of Nigeria. The study examined how farmers-herdsmen conflict constitutes a threat to rural development, internal security, and socio-economic development in Nigeria about Omala Local Government Area of Kogi State, North Central Nigeria. The study adopted the qualitative method making use of semi-structured interviews and 100 informants were purposively selected. Findings from the study revealed among others that; Crop damage by cattle, land encroachment without permission, inadequate grazing reserves, lack of access to water points, killing of stray cattle, pollution of the water point, cattle routes blockage, Mbororo migrants, ECOWAS treaty, fertile land of the host community, socio-economic, cultural differences, the political economy of cattle herders were major causes and persistence of farmers-pastoralists conflicts. The study among others recommends that; since farmers-pastoralists conflicts were resource-based conflict due to blockage of cattle route by farmers which eventually leads to encroachment of farmers land and thus translate to open violence and animosity, there is a need for resignification of cattle routes for the pastoralist to have a route to avoid farmlands encroachment, regarding the transit route for irregular migrants through Niger, Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Chad, Cameroon, it is suggested that the Minister of Interior should initiate dialogue with the neighboring governments on how to address and curb the rising number of migrants transiting border Nations. Based on the study findings, to end this crisis once and for all, there is a need for the consideration of cattle colonies implementation while implementing former recommendations.

This article discusses the ‘red yurt’ campaigns in early Soviet Kazakhstan, in which party and state institutions sponsored mobile centres of Soviet culture in nomadic pastoralist communities. In c...

The study was conducted from June to August 2014 in Isiolo Central division of Isiolo Sub‐County and Sericho division of Garbatulla Sub‐County and comprised two components: (i) a cross‐sectional study on the milk‐handling hygiene practices, where milk traders’ households were the study units and (ii) a case‐control study on the risk factors for Brucella spp. infection in humans. Results of the cross‐sectional study showed that 26.74% of the respondents never washed their hands before milking, 60.47% never washed the udder before milking and 54.65% never withhold consumption of milk from animals under treatment with antibiotics. The case–control study included household units with previous cases of brucellosis (53.33%) and those without (46.67%) over the previous 5 years and identified drinking of raw milk as the main risk factor for infection (OR = 26.44; 95% CI: 8.04–86.99). Pastoralists’ unhygienic handling of milk from production to market is suboptimal and this is due to poor knowledge on hygienic practices, poor knowledge on the risks associated with poor milk hygiene and lack of sufficient and potable water for cleaning of milk containers. Many pastoralists still consume milk raw and this is a major public health risk for milk‐borne diseases., Pastoralists’ unhygienic handling of milk from production to market is suboptimal and this is due to poor knowledge on hygienic practices, poor knowledge on the risks associated with poor milk hygiene and lack of sufficient and potable water for cleaning of milk containers. Many pastoralists still consume milk raw and this is a major public health risk for milk‐borne diseases.

Kajiado County is mainly Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) and as such it is faced with harsh climatic conditions. The county is dominantly inhabited by the Maasai pastoralists who depend on climate-sensitive natural resources for their provisions and production needs. As such, they are faced with low productivity. Therefore, the study investigated historical temperature characteristics combined with surveys on the Maasai pastoralists’ experiences. The study used a mixed-method approach using temperature data along with semi-structured questionnaires. Temperature analysis utilised a mix of ground-based meteorological and satellite data. These temperature data were retrieved from Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) and Climate Hazards Infra-Red Temperature with Stations (CHIRTS) respectively. The climatology analysis from the T-test showed that both the maximum and minimum temperature increased significantly at p < 0.05. A similar temperature rise was noted for spatial analysis where an overall warming trend was observed across the entire county. The Chi-square analysis affirmed the adverse effects of the temperature rise on the Maasai pastoralists as indicated in the growing numbers of heat-related illnesses and deaths in livestock. The resultant social-economic impacts translated to a decline in livestock population pointing up to the need for enhanced preparedness for the warming trends and better prediction models to enhance both societal and ecosystem resilience. Key words: Temperature, natural resources, pastoral livelihood system, society, ecosystem, resilience, climate risks.

This paper examines commoning and practices of care from a feminist lens, here implying a focus on interdependencies of various spheres of life as well as social categories of difference. Through examples from two case studies of herders as commoners (the Nyangatom in Ethiopia and the Rechtler_innen in Germany), I establish connections between everyday that are inseparable when it comes to sustaining life and commons, while also highlighting conceptual challenges for feminist commons analysis.

Struggle over land and scarce resources have resulted in perennial and growing violent conflicts amongst arable crop farmers and cattle herdsmen in various parts of Nigeria. This study analyses the relationship between climate change and patterns of herders-crop farmers’ conflict in Zamfara state, Nigeria. Data for this study were acquired via semi structured questionnaire and Key Informant Interview. Purposeful sampling method was used to select six communities, while 260 farmers and 67 pastoralists were chosen as sample size for the survey based on Krejcie and Morgan’s formula. Descriptive statistics such as percentages, arithmetic mean and Likert rating scale were adopted to analyze the data for the study. Results from the findings indicated that farmers and herders in Zamfara state were within active years of economic and productive age (24 to 44 years). Nearly,75% of both farmers and pastoralists in the study communities professed there is high variability in rainfall pattern and increase in temperature. Three-quarter of the respondents confirmed that the nature of the conflicts was assault involving the use of arms; whereas two-fifth of the respondents affirmed that the conflict occurs during harvest and the planting seasons. The study concluded that climate change is the bane of incessant resource use conflicts in the study area. Thus a clearly formulated government policies and implementation framework that would boost climate change information forecasting and dissemination, adaptive capacity and ranch management will salvage the conflictual relationship subsisting between farmers and herders in the study area

When analyzed systematically, Tropical Africa megalithism appears to have emerged in contexts of friction between different lifeways, agriculturalists versus foragers, pastoralists versus hunter-gatherers-fishermen, or agriculturalists versus fishing folks. The monuments built were clearly part of actual territorial strategies. Research conducted by the Sine Ngayene Archaeological Project (2002-2012) frontally addressed the “Why” of the emergence of megalithism in that part of the world, and probes the reasons for the performance of the elaborate burial practices preserved in the archaeological record. This paper emphasizes the diversity and complexity of burial protocols invented by Senegambian “megalith-builders” communities from 1450 BCE to 1500 CE. Senegambian megalithism is shown to have proceeded from territorial marking imperatives, shaping a multi-layered cultural landscape through the implemented mortuary programs anchored on the construction of Ancestorhood. Keywords: Megaliths; Senegambia; Cultural landscape; Mortuary program; Burial practice; Monolith-circle; Sine-Ngayene

Evidence of change in cattle rustling practice among pastoralist communities worldwide has been noted with globalisation, education, and modernisation, among other factors. However, there is little known about transformation in men and women's involvement in this practice in the wake of easy accessibility of small and light weapons and breakdown of the traditional leadership and control systems. This paper examined the transformation in cattle rustling practice among the Pokot community in West Pokot county. This study's target population included adult residents of the Pokot community, community elders, opinion leaders, political and administrative leaders, and local and international NGOs dealing with cattle rustling issues in West Pokot County. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to recruit 350 respondents. An unstructured questionnaire, a critical informant interview guide, a focus group discussion guide, and an observation guide were used to collect primary data. Qualitative data collected was analysed using patterns and critical themes of this particular objective. Quantitative data analysis was organised using the SPSS software version 2.0 and analysed using various descriptive statistics. The findings indicated that transformation in cattle rustling had seen a cultural activity for the young people to demonstrate their courage and wit and become a murderous criminal endeavour. The community no longer benefits from cattle rustling, but only a few are driven by greed to reap where they never sow. Illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, community conflicts, possession of firearms and insecurity were identified as the leading causes of cattle rustling. Access to formal education has seen many in the school-going age among the West Pokot get exposed to literacy, which has gradually recorded a positive transformation about its cattle rustling practices. Based on the findings, the paper makes the following recommendations to address the problem of cattle rustling among the people of West Pokot County: Enlightenment on contemporary ways of life; formal education among the Pokot to be advocated for; enhancing Security in West Pokot; opening a platform for peace talk and persuasions and operationalising the Eastern Africa Police Chiefs Cooperation Organisation protocol.

The Kaokoveld of northwest Namibia was a backwater of the South African empire. Dominated by arid rangelands, nomadic pastoralists and desert-adapted wildlife, the region proved to be an unfruitful...

Weather shocks affect smallholder farmers and pastoralists in Sub-Saharan Africa unequally. Agricultural insurance has emerged as a safety net option to protect farmers’ welfare. However, in comparison to other regions, fewer African farmers and pastoralists have adopted agricultural insurance. This review synthesises broad recent literature on why insurance take-up has remained low and highlights six key themes, including: (1) product quality, (2) product design, (3) affordability, (4) information and education, (5) behavioural and sociocultural factors, and (6) the role of government in enabling markets. We shed light on how insurance uptake can be encouraged.

Based mainly on archival and oral sources this study examines the history of the cattle-herding Samburu people from the mid-nineteenth century through Kenyan independence in 1963. The authors empha...

Issues of indigeneity and citizenship rights for second-generation pastoralist migrants across the West African States have received little to no attention in migration and pastoralist studies. This article explores this under-researched area in the field of migration studies and revisits the highly contested migration–citizenship nexus among Fulani herders in the Shai-Osu-Doku and Agogo traditional areas of Ghana. The article captures the crises of citizenship facing descendants of Fulani herders and families, particularly in relation to their integration into local host communities. I argue that second-generation migrants remain at the margins, spatially and socio-politically defined, of both development and society. While they do not have any ties with their ancestral “home countries,” they are also considered non-citizens and face growing hostility in the places they call home. Being a citizen is not simply a static legal position, but a status developed through routine practices, building relations, and shared experiences.

The Black Death is claimed to have caused the European Marriage Pattern in England by raising pastoral wages and thus delaying female marriage. We show that this argument does not hold. There is no consensus that late female marriage emerged in rural England after the Black Death. Women wanting to do pastoral work in medieval England did not have to remain unmarried, so improved pastoral opportunities did not necessitate later marriage. Nor does the quantitative relationship between pastoralism and female marriage age in England provide support for this argument. Fertility restriction was not exogenously triggered by the Black Death.

The approach to curbing the conflict between the Fulani pastoralists and farmers in Nigeria assumed a new dimension with the adoption of open grazing prohibition and establishment of ranches legisl...

In the current situation of militant Islamist groups encroaching on peripheral areas of different Sahelian states, mobile pastoralists are often accused of sympathising or collaborating with jihadists. Examining this phenomenon with a focus on eastern Niger and in the context of the Boko Haram crisis in the Lake Chad basin, this article relates it to the debates about incorporation and evasion of pastoralists with regard to state and society, and frontiers and borderlands as spaces not only of difficult governance but also of economic and political opportunities.

Climate change has adversely affected pastoral community in Pakistan through increased severity of livestock diseases, floods, and drought. These climatic hazards caused extensive livestock loss and worsen livelihood of pastoralists’ households. Pastoralists are higher vulnerable to these climate shocks and livestock major source of their nutrition and income. This research work focused to analyze the factors affecting resilience of pastoral community in Punjab province of Pakistan. Understanding shocks of climate change in historical perspective of pastoral community, consultation for key information, and focus group discussions were managed. The study collected data of 768 pastoral households’ regarding pastoral shocks experience, long-term adaptation measures, and coping strategies through external support for resilience upright. Principal component analysis was used for construction of resilience index of pastoral households. In estimating institutional factors, adaptive practice and socio-demographic effects on pastoral households’ resilience structured probit regression were employed in the study. Extension services access, availability of adequate formal credit, pastoral household income, schooling years and adaptive practice like afforestation, the practice of ethno-veterinary, improved stock breeding, beekeeping, enclosures, and grazing of crop fields post-harvest affect significantly and positively in developing pastoral household resilience to shocks. In the past scenario long-term adaptation strategies, policy measures ignored, while investment priority was focused on risk-reducing measures. To enhance long-run pastoral household resilience status regarding climate change shocks, there is need for direct investment to increase adaptive capacity pastoral community.

After the brown bear reintroduction program was launched in the Pyrenees in 1996, the French and Spanish States fostered and funded a regrouping policy to protect the sheep flocks from the bear attacks. Drawing on a comparative analysis between two Catalan districts in north-eastern Spain (Val d'Aran and Pallars Sobira) and the Ariege district in south-western France, this article scrutinises the extent to which the transformation of shepherding practices induced by the renewed presence of bears can be deemed as a return of the 'commons' to the Pyrenees. The emergence of public regrouped herds resembles an old and until then abandoned pastoral format, the communal herd. However, this iteration of collective action is promoted and tightly controlled by the State, whereas previously, local farmers used to manage the old communal system themselves. The regrouping policy mimics the morphology of locally generated models following historical property rights logic, while incorporating a modern form of public governmentality. The conceptualisation of property as a bundle of rights and the two ethnographic studies serve to critically engage with the notion of the commons and their return. The literature on environmentality and territorialisation allows us to read this State-driven policy through the lenses of imposition and dispossession.

This article explores the multiple processes of maintaining access and asserting user rights to forest space among the Van Gujjar pastoralists in North India. In particular, the Forest Rights Act of 2006 (FRA) has created an opportunity for forest dwellers across India to seek legal means to forest rights. Conducting ethnographic fieldwork, organising workshops on forest rights, and mapping traditional territories among the Van Gujjars, we observed that complex cultural performances are necessary for the Van Gujjars to claim access to forest areas and resources—legal or otherwise. These performances include, but are not limited to, litigation, supporting emergent leaders, and caring for cattle and kin under constant threats of evictions. Drawing on recent scholarship on the everyday formation of territorial governments, we examine how communities maintain, contest, or reinvent cultural practices and governance in the context of their struggles for access inscribed as forest rights. In contrasting cases among two groups of Van Gujjars seeking rights to forest spaces in the two neighbouring states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, we shed light on the repercussions that formally or informally engaging the FRA can have for communities of forest dwellers. Based on ethnographic research completed between 2012 and 2019, we find that 1) the Van Gujjar territorial governments carrying on these claims are more diverse than the law recognises, and that 2) not all communities see it worthy to organise a territorial government claiming formal rights under the FRA. Fundamentally, we discern that more immediate threats to Van Gujjar livelihoods result in a greater shift in their cultural practices towards organising a territorial government seeking forest rights through the FRA.

Africa’s international borders have been sites of inter-ethnic and inter-state relations and media for material and cultural exchange. Drawing on archival materials and interviews, the article illu...

The Bedouins who live nomadically have existed for a long time in the desert region of Arabia. They existed before and during the time of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), when the cities in Arabia were still limited in number and level of population. They led a pastoralist life by herding livestock, especially camels. The Bedouins often appear in stories relating to Prophet Muhammad(PBUH),usually anonymous, with their typical characters of rudeness, discourtasy and lack of knowledge. They came to Makkah and Madīnah from time to time. Sometimes they involved in tribal warfare among themselves or against the emerging Islamic sovereignty. Urban society may play an important socio-political role and has more prominent leadership in the region, but the existence of the Bedouin society cannot be said to be unimportant in the structure of society at that time. Understanding the characteristics and the relation between the Bedouins and the sedentary people is actually important to understand the development of society and civilization, as suggested by the explanation of Ibn Khaldūn in his Muqaddimah. The objective of this study is to elucidate the characteristics of nomadic and sedentary societies and the relationship between the two in the era of the Prophet (PBUH) as well as the Islamic attitude towards these two patterns of life. This research is a historical study that uses the Qur’an and Hadīth as its main sources.

The literature on microcredit programs has largely focused on positive socioeconomic outcomes and low accessibility issues in farming areas and has provided less insight into the effects of easily acquired microcredit in pastoral areas. Using a case study approach, and econometric models, this paper addresses this gap by examining why and how easily acquired microcredit loans in Inner Mongolian pastoral areas increase the risk to the financial security of households or livelihood risk. Results show that existing microcredit programs increase livelihood risk because loan and repayment requirements do not align with the husbandry production cycle of contemporary Inner Mongolian pastoralists. This misalignment forces pastoralists to borrow from usurers to repay bank loans. Furthermore, households that need to borrow from usurers typically own smaller numbers of livestock and are less likely to be able to repay the usurers by selling animals. Instead, they tend to increase their bank loans in the coming year to repay the previous year’s debt, trapping them in a vicious and ultimately impoverishing circle of annual loans they cannot fully pay back, and feeding increasing debt. We suggest that microcredit programs in semiarid areas should be in sync with the local production cycle and recognize environmental constraints that cause high variation in production seasonally and year to year. Our results supplement previous findings on microcredit applications and are particularly pertinent for other semiarid areas of the world. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-021-01586-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Ancient nomadic peoples in Northeast Africa, being in the shadow of urban regimes of Egypt, Kush, and Aksum as well as the Graeco-Roman and Arab worlds, have been generally relegated to the historiographical model of the frontier ‘barbarian’. In this view, little political importance is attached to indigenous political organisation, with desert nomads being considered an amorphous mass of unsettled people beyond the frontiers of established states. However, in the Eastern Desert of Sudan and Egypt, a pastoralist nomadic people ancestrally related to the modern Beja dominated the deserts for millennia. Though generally considered as a group of politically divided tribes sharing only language and a pastoralist economy, ancient Beja society and its elites created complex political arrangements in their desert. When Egyptian, Greek, Coptic, and Arab sources are combined and analysed, it is evident that nomads formed a large confederate ‘nomadic state’ throughout late antiquity and the early medieval period — a vital cog in the political engine of Northeast Africa.

The pastoral Fulani in Nigeria’s South-West geo-political zone are mostly migrants from the northern part of the country, with some hailing from neighbouring Chad and Niger. This article examines t...

Poor animal health is reported as one of the major constraints of goat production leading to mortality in pastoral areas like Karamoja Sub-Region in Eastern Uganda. Based in Napak District, this study was aimed at gaining an understanding of the role of proper health management in reducing goat mortality in Kraals. Through convenience sampling, 312 pastoralists out of 388 who own animals in community kraals were reached. The study was carried out using mixed methods approach through structured interviews and focus group discussions to collect both primary and secondary data. The health management index (HMI) as a measure of proper goat health management was constructed using seven routine farm practices (Vaccination, Deworming, Use of Antibiotic, Spraying, Isolation of sick animals, Sanitation and Hygiene and Navel Cord Disinfection). Multivariable regression was conducted using STATA (12) software. The first regression was conducted to find out which socio-economic factors have influence on HMI. It was established that accessibility to training and membership to social groups improve HMP while involvement in other occupation has a negative influence. A second regression was conducted to ascertain if HMI scores affect goat mortality levels. The results revealed a negative and significant influence, implying that an improvement in HMP leads to a reduction in mortality. Enhancing mechanisms which favor practical training and social group formation in form of technology intervention platforms can enhance HMP which will ultimately reduce goat mortality. Key words: Socio-economic factors, goat health management index, Karamoja, goat, multivariable regression.

Modern states and societies development can hardly be achieved without an appropriate policy and action that delivers greater economic outcomes. To this end, all states starting from the ancient times to the modern era practiced economic policies that rely greatly on the accumulation of wealth through different means of the production process that leads to extraction hence accumulation of wealth based on which the state builds and maintains its internal as well as external sovereignty. It was in yesterday this motive for achieving unlimited growth and accumulation of wealth that drives the first British East Indian company to open its first overseas production plant in India in the 18th century.Today the multiple economic social and technological imperative of investment and that of foreign direct investment have become clear. Foreign direct investment is the most important engine based on which sates economy gain income in terms of National Gross Domestic Production, foreign exchange earnings and employment opportunity as well as technological and capital transfer. To this end, countries compete for attracting capitals to flow to their economy in the form of investment. This has greatly benefited countries of South East Asia in the last couple of decades. Africa, though not benefited as much as the what the Asian tigers and other eastern economies gained from foreign direct investment, many of African states are striving to use the advantage of investment in their national endeavor to achieve economic and socio-political development .Yet, the pattern of the distribution of this gain from the foreign direct investment is limited in its scope and not enabled states to benefiting the different sections of their population equally.This problem of uneven distributions of gains from economic development has been common problem in many of the emerging economies.Ethiopia is not peculiar.Despite the progress made in atracting more investors to the national economy,the distribution of these has been uneven.Most of the FDI gains are concentrated in few clusters in the major regions of the country. One of the least benefited livelihhod and economic areas has been the pastoralist roaming areas. Comparatively speaking,thus far,the Somali regional state gained little or no foreign direct investment since the new EPRDF government came into power 30 years ago .This has been despite the region has a huge potential for making gain from FDI given that the required attention and intervention is made.This article makes a description of the investment potentials in Somali regional state baed on the political economy framework. The review concludes that The review fininds out that the region has a huge potential for investment given the right attention by both policymakers and investors.

Pastoral livestock is defined as a reproduction-oriented, grazing-based familial livestock system with community-managed resources. Pastoral breeders differ from one another in the diversity of species and breeds raised, the size and management of herds and the extent of their regional mobility. The social, economic and environmental weight of pastoralist livestock in West and Central sub-Saharan Africa is evoked together with its imputation of environmental degradation. Global changes faced by pastoral livestock are sorted out by domains, climatic and societal, and by time scales, short or long. The incriminated impacts of livestock on ecosystems are assessed in the short and long terms. The functions of pastoral breeding already affected by global changes whether climatic or societal are analyzed. The capacity of two alternative livestock breeding systems, ranching and stall-feeding, to respond to these constraints is reviewed. Finally, pastoral breeding has been recognized as being able to adapt best to long-term climate change and to short- and long-term societal changes, provided that national and international investments are made. Civil security must be restored and pastoralists’ access to water and fodder resources must be secured. Professional organizations and associations should be empowered to negotiate grazing rights, and their skills should be enhanced. There is the need to complete, rehabilitate and manage hydraulic and veterinary infrastructures, but also to invest significantly in adapted health, education and communication infrastructures in long-neglected pastoral areas.

Fulani pastoralists are widely distributed across the six geographical zones of Nigeria and migrate from north to south in search of natural grazing lands at times of forage scarcity. This migratio...

This article explores the intersection of two growing health concerns: the rising incidence of loneliness and the negative health impacts of migration and displacement. To better evaluate loneliness across diverse populations, we emphasize the cultural shaping of expectations for social lives and the ways in which structural vulnerability and violence can undermine these expectations. We draw on ethnographic research with two groups of migrants: Mexican immigrants living in southern Arizona and Turkana pastoralists of Kenya who experience displacement and unpredictable mobility as a result of low intensity violence. For Mexican immigrants, feelings of loneliness intertwine with the emotions of fear, trauma, and sadness, all closely associated with social isolation. The Turkana describe loneliness associated with the loss of their animals, or the shifting social landscapes they must traverse to keep their families safe. The culturally salient experiences described by these two communities highlight the complexity of defining loneliness. Given the pace of global migration and the number of refugees and displaced persons, closer scrutiny of how cultural expectations and structural violence interact to produce feelings of loneliness seems overdue.

This article illustrates how the Yamal-Nenets, a group of reindeer pastoralists in West Siberia, perceive a series of recent natural disasters to be connected to one another through a conspiracy – i.e. caused by the agency of malevolent human forces which are beyond the pastoralists’ control. Recent fieldwork during the peak of the global Covid-19 epidemic served as a trigger for this observation. Their self-confidence in the robustness of their lifestyle and their embeddedness within their natural environment is so strong that Yamal-Nenets nomads believe only evil forces – not nature – can stop them from being mobile. Alongside Covid-19, they interpret the severe consequences of natural disasters, such as iced pastures, related reindeer starvation and the outbreak of anthrax as man-made attempts to reduce the number of people and animals in the tundra. The blame they place on humans for these disasters takes place in the context of hitherto unseen gas industry developments in the area. Such interpretations may become a general pattern for changing perceptions of the world by remote indigenous populations when deprived of their once customary shamanic dialogue with the spirits.

Small ruminants always play a major role in the agricultural economy of India. They provide livelihoods to numerous small and marginal farmers. The diversity of small ruminant population is enormous in the country which contributes to agrarian economy. However, the genetic variety is now at risk due to indiscriminate cross-breeding, and change is farmer's preference towards high-producing breeds. The population statistics is showing a declining trend for the past several years. During time of climate change and outbreak of novel diseases, this genetic diversity is important as consumer preferences and climate is bound to change in future. So to ensure fitness and vitality in future populations of food-producing animals, and to keep genetic options open, access to greater diversity of genetic material will always be required. The native breeds of the country also possess several characteristics of disease tolerance, high fecundity and specific products which make them unique in their own aspect. Hence, conservation programmes should be adopted to maintain this large diversity of small ruminants. It may involve tradition practices followed by pastoralists or modern reproductive technologies like MOET. The government has taken several steps towards conservation and national institutes like NBAGR works for evaluation and conservation of native genetic diversity. However, better awareness among famers and improving of conservational approaches will go a long way in sustainable management of sheep and goat genetic resources.

In the eleventh to thirteenth century, Southern African Nguni-speakers made a counterintuitive choice to begin investing in large herds of cattle. Despite a long-standing knowledge of cattle, the earliest Nguni-speakers did not take to cattle-keeping as a way of life. Rather, the transition came as the result of changing social circumstances as households sought to manage the lifecycles of young men and reliably exploit their labor through gendered and generational expectations of decorum. Nguni-speakers grounded new concepts about cattle in older practices and norms regarding the social reproduction of young men. Agropastoralists situated cattle-keeping among the obligations young men faced after passing through initiation, giving cattle local salience. The transformation unfolded in gendered and generational household choices, but was shaped by the broad context of an increasingly interconnected Southern Africa.

Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000103, The high mountains of the Mediterranean are often considered as refuges of ancient traditions, particularly of pastoralism and brigandage. Is this image true? This paper reports the first systematic archaeological research on Aspromonte, Southern Calabria. Archaeological, cartographic and air photo evidence suggests that people used the high mountains in all periods from the Neolithic onwards. However, early usage was low-intensity and probably for special purposes such as iron-smelting, charcoal-burning and logging; only in the Classical Greek period was there sustained effort at inhabiting higher areas. The real development of the mountains came in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the 1920s onwards, there were large-scale, state-fostered projects for economic exploitation of forests, political control of territory, and creation of a recreational landscape. These endeavors tied into modernist ideas of the state, as well as period concepts such as Alpinism and healthy outdoor recreation for city dwellers. Ironically, as soon as these modern efforts made the high mountains accessible, they were assigned a chronotope, and were reimagined as the exemplification of an ancient way of life.

Formerly marginal areas are increasingly the focus of extractive mega-projects, which are framed as necessary for economic growth and a modern industrial economy. Yet there are concerns that such projects are unjustly displacing local populations, facilitated through the alliances of local elites with foreign investors. This article asks, who are the winners and losers from oil exploration in the Turkana region of Kenya? Using longitudinal ethnographic research on the dynamics of local government, oil exploration, and pastoralist livelihoods in Turkana, Mkutu and Mdee highlight how current processes may exacerbate inequality and marginalization, with the potential for increasingly violent consequences.

Mongolia's transition to a democratic, market economy has created widespread change, especially among pastoral herders. Pastoralists have been depicted as archaic and independent ‘nomads’ who exist...

Innamincka Station, South Australia, built by Henry Colless on the northern bank of Cooper Creek in 1875, was, until recently, believed be the original Innamincka Station. This belief is now challenged by the discovery of three small ruins on the south bank of Cooper Creek and the identification of a little-known pioneering venture of courage and youthful exuberance. Searches through a tangle of archives identified evidence that these humble ruins are the site of an earlier Innamincka Station homestead built by Robert Bostock in 1873. The site also contained a transient postcontact Aboriginal camp containing evidence that the Yandruwandha people maintained their traditional culture through the transfer of traditional lithic technologies to glass following the abandonment of the homestead in 1880. In addition, the analysis of manufactured artifacts associated with other features provided insights into the "station diet" of the pastoralists and the hardships they experienced in this harsh environment.

Mediterranean Africa forms a crucial junction between the wider Saharan zone and the rest of the Mediterranean. In contrast to its well-investigated history from the first millennium BC onward, its antecedent dynamics are very poorly understood, and deeper archaeological histories of the Mediterranean therefore remain unbalanced and incomplete. This paper draws on a new surge in data to present the first up-to-date interpretative synthesis of this region's archaeology from the start of the Holocene until the threshold of the Iron Age (9600-1000 bc). It presents the evidence for climatic, environmental and sea-level change, followed by analysis of the chronological and spatial patterning of all radiocarbon dates from Mediterranean Africa, brought together for the first time. The principal exploration then divides into three phases. During Phase 1 (9600-6200 bc) diverse forms of hunting, gathering and foraging were ubiquitous. Phase 2 (6200-4000 bc) witnessed more continuity than elsewhere in the Mediterranean, but also the widespread uptake of domesticated livestock and gradual evolution of herding societies, as well as limited enclaves of farming. Phase 3 (4000-1000 bc) has been least explored, outside developments in Egypt; in the east this phase witnessed the emergence of fully nomadic and transhumant pastoralism, with political superstructures, while trajectories in the west remain obscure, but in parts of the Maghreb suggest complex possibilities. Contacts with the Mediterranean maritime world grew during the third and second millennia bc, while interaction to the south was transformed by desertification. Understanding how the southern Mediterranean shore was drawn into Iron Age networks will require much better knowledge of its indigenous societies. The present constitutes a pivotal moment, in terms of accumulated knowledge, pathways for future investigation and engagement with a challenging current geopolitical situation.

The article is devoted to the study of cult sanctuaries of the early and middle bronze age, which are one of the most important sources for the reconstruction of ideological ideas of the population of Dagestan. The work is based on the materials of settlements, burial grounds, research sanctuaries, attraction and analysis of religious objects, rock paintings, which reflect the ideological ideas of the ancient population of the North-Eastern Caucasus, and Dagestan, in particular. The purpose and objective of this article is a comprehensive study of religious sanctuaries and monuments of art, on the basis of which the study of ancient religious and ideological ideas of the local population in the early and middle bronze age. A comprehensive study of household, burial and religious monuments, the study of which reveals the various religious beliefs and rituals, as well as objects of worship of the population of Dagestan in the early and middle bronze age allowed to highlight many of the problems associated with the ideological beliefs of the local population. The considered materials show that the tribes of Dagestan in the early and middle bronze age had a fairly complex and developed ideology for that time. At the heart of the beliefs of ancient farmers and pastoralists, judging by the study of religious sanctuaries, rock paintings and hearths was the worship of various cults: fertility cults, agricultural cults, cults of animals, wood, etc. They are also expressed in different characters – solar, agricultural, female, etc. Their study helped to get an idea of the spiritual culture of the population of the region to reveal that the population of Dagestan during the early and middle bronze age there existed a complex and diverse beliefs.

Since independence in 1990, a growing number of institutions and social groups have advanced diverse and often conflicting visions and expectations regarding the use of land in Namibia’s Communal A...

The present study entitled “Ethno-veterinary knowledge and practices amongst indigenous pastoralists in the Menoua division, West region of Cameroon” was conducted from January to June 2019. It was aimed at assessing and analyzing more specifically; pastoralists’ perceptions regarding ethno-veterinary practices, major ethno-veterinary practices in the study area, major challenges faced by pastoralists in the field of ethno-veterinary, and pastoralists’ conservation measures for proper management of these knowledge/practices. A descriptive method of statistics was employed where survey questionnaires, FGDs, and field observations were used for data collection. A sample size of 200 respondents was targeted through both purposive and stratified sampling methods. The major findings indicate that, there is disease prevalence in the study area with over 93.0% of responses. A large majority of respondents (62.0%) use both ethno-veterinary and modern means of treatments while over 26.5% depends only on ethno-veterinary medicines. Pastoralists in the study area proved to have positive attitude and concern for ethno-veterinary medicines and over 58.0% of them judged it to be ‘very effective and fruitful’. Documentation of major ethno-veterinary practices was realized for the following cattle diseases plaguing the study area; Brucellosis, FMD, Cowdriosis, Streptothricosis, Babesiosis, Diarrhoea, Ringworm, Infertility, Epheral fever, Bloat, Wound, Poisoning, Fracture, Lumpy skin, Lice, Ticks, and Flies. The major challenges encountered by pastoralists in ethno-veterinary practices were; difficulties in obtaining medicinal plants due to recent physico-demographic challenges, difficulties in preparation and/or usage of dosage, and challenges in storage/preservation, accounting for 93.0%, 89.5% and 82.5% of responses respectively. Despite these challenges, pastoralists in the study area pass down ethno-veterinary knowledge/practices to the younger generation and some of them still conserve medicinal plants in home gardens as effective means to preserve and promote this very important resource pool necessary for man and his society. Nevertheless, according to the respondents, the most important workable solution for the preservation and promotion of ethno-veterinary practices include; documentation of the knowledge/practices, full integration of this system of medicine into the educational milieu, protection of areas containing ethno-medicinal plants, and the promotion of home gardening of medicinal plants.

This paper explores how the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), as an example of contemporary bottom-up development practices in the global South, governs nomadic pastoralists in the peripheries. Based on fieldwork in Ethiopia's Somali region, we show that PSNP practices of client targeting, community-based public works and (international) financial resource flows, both for their own sake and because of their entanglement with the sedentary metaphysics of Ethiopian state, have advanced sedentary governmental order into pastoral peripheries more than top-down state sedentarization interventions had ever done. Finally, we argue that bottom-up development practice is an effective tool for state-building in the periphery.

AIM: As a response of pastoralists to climate change, nomadic migration deeply shaped Chinese history during the imperial era. Existing research on climate‐driven nomadic migration is conducted mainly on a national–continental scale. To advance the current work, we aim to resolve migratory movements at a provincial–regional scale using a large and long‐term historical dataset as a first attempt. The spatio‐temporal features of nomadic migration under climatic effects, specifically precipitation, are analysed in the theoretical context of behavioural ecology. LOCATION: China. TIME: Imperial era (220 BC–1910 AD). STUDY SUBJECT: Nomadic pastoralist minorities in imperial China. METHODS: We frame the analysis using an ideal free distribution model. A total of 1,842 historical location records of pastoralist immigration are empirically examined. Precipitation anomalies and nomadic migration are statistically assessed with nonparametric and Poisson regression methods, and temporal interdependencies among provincial–regional migratory movements are explored with a vector autoregressive model. RESULTS: We divide imperial China into six regions according to statistical results and geographic factors. Overall, decreased precipitation and drought provoked pastoralist migrations in a north‐to‐south direction. Northern nomads, with an apparent preference for central China as a major destination, triggered the most conflicts with resident agriculturalists. Nomads originating from the Tibetan minority regions moved north‐eastward into Qinghai Province as their main destination. MAIN CONCLUSIONS: Long‐term regional patterns of pastoralist migration are closely associated with drought‐induced ecological change in imperial China. Climate‐driven dynamics assessed with long‐term historical data facilitate the understanding of climate–ecology–society interactions in behavioural ecology and macroecology. Moreover, findings from imperial China may imply that cultural acceptance and communications could avoid conflicts between immigrants and original residents when facing mass migration, an issue of growing contemporary urgency in many parts of the world.

The origin and early dispersal of speakers of Transeurasian languages—that is, Japanese, Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic—is among the most disputed issues of Eurasian population history1–3. A key problem is the relationship between linguistic dispersals, agricultural expansions and population movements4,5. Here we address this question by ‘triangulating’ genetics, archaeology and linguistics in a unified perspective. We report wide-ranging datasets from these disciplines, including a comprehensive Transeurasian agropastoral and basic vocabulary; an archaeological database of 255 Neolithic–Bronze Age sites from Northeast Asia; and a collection of ancient genomes from Korea, the Ryukyu islands and early cereal farmers in Japan, complementing previously published genomes from East Asia. Challenging the traditional ‘pastoralist hypothesis’6–8, we show that the common ancestry and primary dispersals of Transeurasian languages can be traced back to the first farmers moving across Northeast Asia from the Early Neolithic onwards, but that this shared heritage has been masked by extensive cultural interaction since the Bronze Age. As well as marking considerable progress in the three individual disciplines, by combining their converging evidence we show that the early spread of Transeurasian speakers was driven by agriculture., A ‘triangulation’ approach combining linguistics, archaeology and genetics suggests that the origin and spread of Transeurasian family of languages can be traced back to early millet farmers in Neolithic North East Asia.

Large-scale development interventions have long failed to accommodate the needs and preferences of pastoralists or the systems of resource governance and land tenure upon which they rely. However, advocates of rights-based approaches to development emphasise the importance of community participation in planning and agenda-setting, and in Kenya, public participation is a formal constitutional requirement for government decision-making processes. In 2015, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees concluded negotiations with local stakeholders about the use of 15 km2 of communal rangelands to build a new refugee settlement in Turkana County, Kenya. Negotiations entailed a community dialogue process involving local people living in the vicinity of the proposed settlement. This paper retrospectively examines the inclusivity of the dialogue process, with particular attention to the involvement of pastoralists and the representation of their interests. Interviews and focus groups conducted with a range of key informants and community stakeholders highlighted two key problems. First, negotiations relied upon a simplistic approach to communal land tenure that overlooked the complexity of overlapping and often contested access rights. Second, there was an over-reliance on urban professionals and politicians as intermediaries between rural communities and development actors. Even where elite intermediaries act in good faith, they may introduce an ‘oppidan bias’ into development policies, thereby marginalising the viewpoints of non-urban, non-sedentary demographics, such as pastoralists. I conclude with recommendations for the UNHCR to develop a more explicit strategy for direct engagement with host community stakeholders in Turkana and with increased attention to the interests of livestock producers and the nuances of pastoralist land use.

Pastoralists in Western Mongolia face a range of challenges during their annual grazing cycle due to the simultaneous but conflicting needs for secure allocation rules and a high degree of flexibility. In this paper, I analyze the seasonal arrangements and corresponding strategies that households adopt to deal with unpredictable environmental conditions and the demands of supplying livestock with sufficient forage throughout the year. In contrast to game theory simulations, I argue that dilemmas are: a) often not a question of cooperating or not, but form continua of more or less; and b) socially embedded as people operate in a multitude of relationships that influence their decision-making. Therefore, sharing information in a manner that prioritizes the requirements of individual households while not jeopardizing social reputation is crucially important. Rhetorical skills play an important role in this regard, but there are also situations when herders blatantly ignore state law or local institutional arrangements and risk confrontation to ensure the survival of livestock leading to a situation where free-riding may at times become the dominant strategy.